Kyle’s focus left me and he seemed to survey the ballroom critically. “Not here. It’s going to get loud in twenty minutes.”
I didn’t want to spend twenty minutes with him. I didn’t trust myself when his face looked good enough to wrap my thighs around. “Twenty minutes? Come on, counselor, we both know you can finish in five.”
His shoulders snapped back, but otherwise he didn’t seem fazed. “How can you be sure? Usually you’ve forgotten your name after the first two.”
My mouth hung open. He pulled out his wallet, dug out a few bigger bills, and made a production of dropping them into the tip jar so the bartender would see.
“Can I grab a bottle of champagne and two glasses?” he asked her.
It sounded like he was only asking as a courtesy, and confirmed it when he didn’t wait for an answer. He stepped to the side of the bar, where two servers were pouring champagne into rows of flutes, took two glasses from the end, and plucked an unopened bottle from the large ice bin.
Kyle didn’t wait for me to follow, and I hurried to keep up as he headed for the exit.
“Where are we going?” I tried to walk steady and not spill my nearly full wine.
We cleared the doorway
and he continued at a fast clip toward the elevator bank. He slapped the button for ‘up,’ and turned to look at me. “Upstairs.”
“Seriously? No. I’m not going up to your room.”
“Okay, not a problem. I don’t have a room.”
The elevator doors peeled back, revealing an empty car. I took too long to decide what to do, and Kyle made the decision for me. He crossed the champagne flute stems in his hand and gripped the neck of the bottle all in one, so his free hand could touch me in the small of my back and urge me forward into the elevator.
I sucked in a sharp breath at the contact.
It was silly. He wasn’t a stranger; he knew me intimately. This delicate touch wasn’t sexual, and yet the muscles tightened in my belly. My heart skipped faster. It felt like he hadn’t touched me in a lifetime, and yet my body remembered like it had happened only five minutes ago.
I spun around to face the doors and watched my last chance to escape fade away as they slid shut.
The air was thick being alone with him, but I refused to look at him. Instead I watched the numbers climb as we rose toward the top floor. Where was he taking me? If there was a bar at the top, that didn’t make much sense. It’d be just as loud as the ballroom at midnight, and they wouldn’t let us in with Kyle carrying the champagne.
My throat tightened as I spoke. “When did you come back?”
“About a year ago.”
Even though I already knew the answer, it wounded me all the same. He’d been in the city, working for his parents’ firm for more than a year. We had mutual Facebook friends. If he’d wanted to find me, he easily could have. But why would he want to find me, after he’d so cleanly severed my heart?
I washed the hard lump in my throat down with a healthy dose of my wine. Coming to the fundraiser had been a stupid idea. Maybe the dumbest thing I’d ever done, and I’d once gone to a Baha Men concert.
The elevator halted, and Kyle gestured to the opening doors. I hurried out of the confined space, but then pulled to a stop. “Again,” I said. “Where are we going?”
Kyle moved swiftly to the hallway and swung left. The sign announced rooms were to the right, and the pool was to the left. The . . . pool? On the top floor?
“Shit,” he groaned as we approached the door. “It closed at eleven.”
Sure enough, the pool hours listed on the glass door declared the pool area closed. He cupped a hand to the glass and peered inside. It was too dark for me to make anything out, but he straightened abruptly and rapped his knuckles loudly on the door.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“There’s a guy in there cleaning up.”
I stood back as a man in a hotel uniform pushed open the door and flicked an irritated gaze at Kyle.
Only the irritation evaporated when Kyle pulled out his wallet and shoved a handful of cash toward the man. “Mind if we have a private party in there?”
The janitor didn’t mind at all. He snatched up the bills and jammed them in a pocket. “Clean up after you’re done. The door will lock behind you when you leave.”